Take back the NHS means what exactly?

Today the Green Party of England and Wales is launching its election manifesto with a call to "take back" the NHS from the private sector. 

In terms of meaningless statements I’m not sure I can think of many better.  

Let’s just think what the NHS is.  It has only one role.  And that is to provide a free at the point of delivery healthcare service to the nation.  No party I’m aware is advocating anything different. 

It employs people to deliver services, that’s true.  But here is where it begins to unravel very quickly.  Is Natalie saying everyone who delivers a service for the NHS should be employed by the NHS?  Is she saying every service provided by the NHS should be State owned?  Is she saying that the NHS should only use equipment that is made by the State?  You can see very quickly how ridiculous such a statement is.  This really is not the progressive politics that she claims it is.  It’s regressive.  It’s old eastern bloc thinking of yesteryear.

So in her model of utopia I guess she will have to start with employing all the GPs in the country as currently they are all independent businesses that deliver services on behalf of the NHS.  So they will have to buy out every GP practice including in many cases their premises.  Though one wouldn’t wish to hold their breath on them paying compensation.  That car crash of an interview with Nick Ferrari a few weeks back had Natalie having a cough at the critical time when she was being asked how she could justify such a low cost in building new houses when the land had to be bought.  Was it a strategic cough there to hide the reality of the Greens?  They would simply nationalise the land, the State taking away without compensation what was not theirs.

Then there are the businesses who build hospitals.  I don’t think I can name a hospital that was built by the public sector.  And there is all the goods and services that are used.  The beds, the monitors, the sheets on the beds, the drugs, the syringes, the clothes the nurses wear.  You see where this is going.  The NHS can’t exist without what the private sector provides.   In addition, ask yourself, “who funds every single nurse working in the NHS?”.  The private sector.   

The Greens want to go to a model where the State runs, the State provides.  And as we all know only too well, that brings mediocrity at every level.   The olden days we called it Communism.  Today we call it Green politics.

So when a Green candidate pops on to your doorstep, ask them, what exactly do they mean when they say they will take back the NHS.